


Bottle of Smoke

by smoochfestmod



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dubcon Dream, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 15:11:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4226616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smoochfestmod/pseuds/smoochfestmod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Author/Artist LJ Name: fulselden<br/>Songspiration: Genie in a Bottle - Christina Aguilera<br/>Prompter:<br/>Title: Bottle of Smoke<br/>Prompt Number: 172<br/>Pairing(s): Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione<br/>Summary: Harry Potter serves tea at the Ministry. He has always served tea at the Ministry. He certainly isn’t the sort of person to stumble upon a conspiracy, let alone acquire an irritable blue genie.<br/>Rating: M<br/>Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.<br/>Warning(s): Some mention of mental illness and memory loss. One very dubconny dream.<br/>Epilogue compliant? No<br/>Word Count: ~ 15, 500<br/>Author's Notes: Many thanks to my prompter for a really fun prompt. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve played a little fast and loose with some of the details. I’d like to thank my betas, E and R, and the mods for being incredibly patient and forbearing. Really, thank you!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bottle of Smoke

Harry Potter was serving tea. He walked through the crowded halls of the Ministry of Magic, occasionally ducking flying shoals of memos, with his trusty never-empty teapot, milk jug, and a line of teacups bobbing along behind him like a line of ducklings.

The Ministry was in the grip of a refurbishment that left its labyrinthine corridors smelling heavily of fresh paint and its inhabitants even less likely to get out of Harry’s way. He was forced to edge around bushels of rolled-up inspirational posters and hop over cauldrons full of violently mauve paint, all without getting in the way of important wizards and witches in neat Ministry robes with better things to do than pay attention to Harry and his teacups.

In one second-floor corridor, a frazzled-looking witch in overalls was directing a stream of paintbrushes to and fro from one paint-filled cauldron, sending them swooping over the faintly grubby cream walls. All the walls after that were freshly painted: mauve with gold trimmings. It was a bit like being inside a rather polite whorehouse, Harry thought to himself, with a hazy vision of the Ministry as some kind of technicolour Wild West bordello from one of the old films Dudley would watch on Sunday afternoons when he’d got bored of chasing Harry or playing video games. But of course, it was only a refurbishment.

No more than a routine inconvenience, he told himself firmly, rolling his eyes as he was forced to flatten himself against a suspiciously tacky wall by a troop of marching golden statues being chivvied along by a fierce-looking interior decorator. When the last of the statues had marched past, staring nobly and blindly, Harry blinked his eyes against the dazzle, peeled himself off the wall, and tried to scourgify the worst of the paint off his uniform, with limited success. It was a good thing he’d already dealt with his boss, he thought, craning over his shoulder for remaining flecks of violet. Behind his head, the teacups – violet and gold as well, in point of fact – jostled consolingly. Harry sighed and motioned them onwards.

 

It was a relief to discover that Auror Headquarters was, as ever, in a state of somnolent chaos. When Harry pushed his way through the frosted glass doors, two young Aurors were gingerly levitating a tank of shrieking Grindylows over desks overflowing with paper and parchment and blurry in places with privacy spells. Smiling posters of the Saviour grinned down from every wall, inspirational slogans scrolling across them in effortful jerks. A Hag wearing stout iron handcuffs was sucking her teeth obnoxiously in the centre of the room, and a tearful witch wearing bedroom slippers under her robes was leaning over the reception desk and telling the Auror on duty that her house had been seen by five Muggles on a picnic, "even though the charms have never failed before! They just wandered in and set up camp in the middle of the rose garden! The topiary nearly ate them before we realized they were there!"

"You need the Obliviators, ma'am," the Auror told her. "Lift B, five floors across and one down, then staircase M, second left, five doors down, then second right. You can't miss it." When the witch had bustled off, slippers flapping, the Auror raised his head wearily. "Oh, hello, Harry," he said. "Not often we see you round these parts. His nibs must be away on a junket, I'm guessing?"

"He's off on his tour of the provinces," said Harry. "Milk and sugar for you, Ron?"

"Just milk for me today," said Ron. "Got to keep in shape for the ladies."

"You mean, so that you can pass your field-service exam," said a voice from behind Harry. "Honestly, Ron, it'll require a little more discipline than you're demonstrating by not having sugar in your tea!" And with that, Hermione Granger dumped a teetering stack of parchment on the front desk, turned on her heel, and was gone in a flurry of law-wizard robes and fluffy hair.

"And that's why we broke up!" Ron called after her. "I'll have that sugar, now, please," he told Harry.

Harry flicked his wand, and a couple of sugar cubes materialised in Ron's cup with a stolid plop.

Ron stared down at them morosely. “Everything’s going wrong today,” he told his tea. “All the files are in the wrong places. All of them! And half the cells are empty, and I swear, it’s like she moved back in without telling me – this morning I was finding her stuff everywhere. My head feels like someone scooped out my brains and put a pygmy-puff in there.” He looked up, smiling a little ruefully. “But you don’t want to hear me going on, do you,” he said. “Sorry. Don’t know what came over me.”

Harry conjured him a rich tea biscuit without even being asked, and went to make the rounds of the other Aurors.

"Get those horrible things down to the Department of Magical Creatures!" yelled Ron behind him. "That tank is going to spill all over everywhere!"

 

\--

 

Half an hour later, trudging along the odd-smelling corridor between the Department of Shampoo Development and the Extremely Experimental Potions Laboratory, Harry came across the witch in slippers again. She was standing outside the lifts, poking the round brass buttons outside it with increasing desperation. A Patronus in the shape of a large turbot was gliding around her head.

"They won't stop asking questions, Ethrelda, and two of them managed to get themselves bitten by the grandfather clock. What are you doing over there?" it was saying, rather desperately.

"That lift's broken," Harry told her. "You need to take staircase R and remember to turn clockwise at the bottom."

The witch stood and blinked at him with the kind of horrified resignation often induced by navigating the Ministry. Harry had a feeling that the new colour scheme was only going to make the effect worse.

"Or I could take you, if you like," he said. "But I'll have to make it quick; I'm late as it is."

The witch's name, it turned out, was Ethrelda Yardbarrow, and according to her husband's patronus the concealment charms on her house were still down.

"It wouldn't matter so much, but we're right on the edge of the village rugby field," she told Harry. "It makes for a lovely view every Tuesday and Saturday at practice, but I don't know what we'll do when the under twelves turn up tomorrow morning. Our cupola changes colour every hour, on the hour!" She stopped and peered at Harry over her spectacles. "Goodness me," she said. "Are you Harry Potter?"

"That's me," said Harry.

"Well," she said, "Merlin knows we heard a lot about you when you were a little baby. And the scar's still there. It must," she said confidingly, "be such a relief now that You-Know-Who's gone." She looked him up and down, taking in the twin rows of shiny buttons on his short jacket, his neatly-tied apron, and the jaunty little cap on his head. "And such a smart uniform, too," she said.

"That’s the idea," said Harry. He should, he suppose, be thankful that the uniform wasn’t mauve. "It's this door just here. Don't let the fog worry you. Get enough Obliviators in one place and it just starts to gather."

 

\--

 

Harry was five minutes late for his four o'clock appointment with the Minister.

"You're late," said the Minister furiously. He was standing behind his desk with his back to Harry and his teacups, staring out through the expanse of his magical window at what looked like the wide lawns of a country house, with dusty light drifting past high yew hedges. "Late!" he repeated. "Tea is at four prompt, that's the agreement! Surely that nincompoop can spare you for five minutes every day." His voice rose higher, growing querulous. "It just doesn't taste the same from the Ministry kitchens! It just doesn't taste the same." He spun round, clutching the back of his heavy chair with long-fingered hands. "Not the same!"

"Milk or sugar, sir?" asked Harry.

The Minister's lips thinned and whitened into a bitter line, and he shook his head slowly, eyes staring.

"Black, as ever, will be quite sufficient, Mr Potter," came a voice from Harry's left. The Minister's wife was sitting at her accustomed place by the fire, with the small card table at her elbow covered with neat piles of shrunken documents and full size photos of herself and her husband, smiling regally out of their frames.

"Of course, Mrs Malfoy," said Harry. Mrs Malfoy was under the impression that he was under a mild Imperius that would prevent him from taking much notice of the Minister's unusual behaviour, like most people in the Ministry. Harry had long since discovered that he could throw off the charm if he really tried. But he had also discovered that few people had much interest in listening to wild accusations from a tea boy. He was left with a mild and rather abstract admiration for Mrs Malfoy, who at the very least hadn't built herself an enormous golden statue in the Ministry atrium.

 

Now, however, as he poured the Minister and his wife their tea, spelling the customary slice of lemon into Mrs Malfoy's cup, Harry found himself possessed of a large and sudden anger, sticking in his throat like a chunk of rotten apple. He had spent a large portion of his life since he'd left Hogwarts polishing that statue, and most of the rest of the time serving tea. And before that – what? He felt as if he’d been living his life through the kind of nubbled glass the Dursleys had in their front hall. He was quite certain, abruptly, that if he poured one more cup of tea for one more Ministry flunky he would die of boredom, or explode, or something equally dramatic.

He looked over at Mrs Malfoy, who was staring pensively at her wand. Well, now was as good a time as any.

"I'm leaving, Mrs Malfoy," he said clearly. "I'm resigning my position. I quit."

Mrs Malfoy gave a little ladylike gasp. "But that's quite impossible, Mr Potter," she said. "After all, you are the Saviour's tea boy."

Harry refrained from saying that he knew this perfectly well. And after all, he told himself firmly, the Dursleys had told him he was plenty of things, and they hadn't all been true.

"Nevertheless, Mrs Malfoy," he said. "I'm sure he'll manage. I'll file the appropriate forms in triplicate with the WR Department, don't worry."

"But you're the Saviour's tea boy," repeated the Minister, glowering at him over his teacup. "And tea is at four prompt!"

"I'll just leave these here," said Harry hastily, waving his wand at his flying tea set and retreating through the great oak doors of the Minister's office. "Good luck running the Ministry, Mrs Malfoy!"

 

\--

 

By the time Harry had filled out six feet of Official Ministry Resignation paperwork (reason for leaving: 'boredom'), his hands were cramped and ink-splattered, and he was sinkingly aware that he rather missed his little flock of teacups. And he still knew perfectly well that he was the Saviour's tea boy, which made the prospect of getting any other work seem rather dim. Still, when he walked under the golden statue of the Saviour on the way to the Ministry Floos, the thought of never again having to polish another inch of that gleaming smile was certainly cheering.

A huddle of law-wizards were standing in front of the Floos, arguing. "I don't care how lucky I am that the Ministry has an enlightened policy on Muggleborn witches and wizards!" he heard Hermione Granger's shrill voice declaiming. "I don't know how I've been sticking it out in property law for this long! I want to make a difference, not spend my life poring over deeds!" The group of lawyers moved away, still arguing. "My contract says a month's notice, and I'm giving a month's notice," Hermione was saying, her voice getting higher by the second.

"There've been more resignations today than there were in the last six months at the Ministry," said a witch with a heavy Welsh accent, coming up behind him. "Strange business. Now, are you using that Floo or aren't you?"

 

\--

 

Harry was still thinking about those other resignations as he tumbled out of his narrow grate onto his worn carpet and lit the candles around his flat with a flick of his wand. Arcadia Flats were not especially Arcadian, but they were close to Diagon Alley, and Harry was quite fond of the gargoyles that prowled their red-brick Victorian frontage. Leaning out of his window and looking down at the Muggles walking along the pavement below, umbrellas up against the early summer rain, Harry was reassured that none of them seemed to be noticing anything amiss about the anodyne office building they should be seeing above their heads. At least he wouldn't be having to call in the Obliviators any time soon.

He waved absently at one of the gargoyles perched along from his window, its stone hide mottled with rain and reflecting the unfortunate tomato red of the illuminated Grunnings Global sign that took up most of the building opposite. The gargoyle sniffed at him and hawked up a pellet of pigeon bones onto the pavement below. Harry sighed and closed his window.

Seen through rain-splattered glasses, his flat was as poky and messy as usual. A pile of unwashed plates sat in the sink, and there was a faint smell of last night's takeaway Biryani. A pile of half-read Daily Prophets sat in coffee-crinkled glory on the counter. The newspaper on top of the pile was open on the front page of the sports section, where a headline proclaimed 'New Chaser for Holyhead Harpies Breaks British Record!' Below, a newspaper-print Ginny Weasley grinned fiercely, over and over, as she swooped down to put a quaffle through the hoop. Harry folded the newspaper over her smiling face.

 

He was pouring himself a glass of cheap firewhisky and debating the merits of going and telling Mrs Panjabi that he might be especially behind with the rent again ('no severance pay for Ministry workers below grade 5B', the forms had informed him in red-ink triplicate), when there was a business-like knock on his door.

And there was Mrs Panjabi, looking fed-up as ever. In this case, however, Harry had to admit that she had a point, since behind her was hulking Dudley Dursley, holding a crocodile-skin briefcase and shifting uneasily from foot to foot in a great deal of very shiny suit.

"Found this Muggle lurking around trying to find his way in," said Mrs Panjabi. "He claims he's a relative?"

"He's my cousin," said Harry blankly. Of all the people he'd expect to turn up at his door (a list that admittedly consisted mostly of Mrs Panjabi), Dudley was one of the least likely candidates he could imagine.

"Well," said Mrs Panjabi. "Do try and have a little more respect for the Statute of Secrecy than you do for my carpets, Mr Potter. Good evening." And she swept away down the hall.

"You'd better come in," Harry told Dudley.

 

Once perched on a rickety chair in Harry's cramped living room-kitchen, lit with a faintly infernal glow from the sign across the street, Dudley seemed to have very little idea what to do with himself.

"Would you like some coffee?" Harry asked him. "I'm on a break from tea at the moment."

Dudley blinked at him. "Is that how all wizards dress?" he asked, staring at Harry's uniform.

"Just me, actually," said Harry briskly. "Why are you here, Dudley?"

Dudley frowned and clicked open his briefcase. "I think," he said, "that I'm under some kind of spell."

With as much of a flourish as he could pull off in a suit too small around the shoulders and too loose everywhere else, Dudley pulled a glowing golden lamp with a long spout out of the briefcase. "It's something to do with this," he said. "I nicked it from my boss."

Harry stared at the lamp. It looked almost unreal, as if it was a picture rather than an actual object, resting in Dudley's meaty pink palm like some kind of golden bird.

"It's the lamp from Aladdin," said Dudley. "Like, actually the same lamp."

"I'll take your word for it," said Harry, who had been strictly forbidden from 'lazing around and watching television' as a child by Petunia Dursley. The lamp did look straight out a cartoon, he had to admit. You could practically see the black outlines around it, and it glowed as if backlit.

"It must have a genie inside it," Dudley was saying. "But I can't get it to work." He rubbed the lamp vigorously against his sleeve. "See? Nothing."

"Actually," said Harry, "I'm moderately certain that genies are one thing the Wizarding World doesn't have." He'd seen a djinni once, striding through the Ministry at the head of a delegation from the Fatima al-Fihri Institute for Magical Studies, and there'd been nothing to distinguish it from any other learned and important-looking wizard, except for the halo of thin fire around its head and its eyes, black as wet slate. He certainly couldn't imagine anyone putting it inside a cartoon oil lamp.

 

"But it must be something like that!" Dudley insisted. "Things at work are really weird. Yesterday all the water in the water coolers turned into pink champagne. And that was great, but then Featherstone from accounting turned into an ottoman in the middle of a meeting. And I swear the building keeps getting taller. All the pot plants are growing sweets, now. I mean, growing like fruit! And half the people don't seem to notice anything. Some of them are just wandering around humming. And there's this fog that keeps building up around Ms Lockhart's office. It's freaking me out. Aren't you people supposed to stop stuff like this from happening?"

Harry turned and stared out of the window at the Grunnings Global sign. Most of it was taken up with the picture of a beautiful blonde woman in a business suit, wielding a large red drill in a faintly suggestive manner. Grunnings Global! read the tagline over her head. Gwendolyn Lockhart says "Drill Baby Drill!!"

"It is pretty weird that Grunnings Global is the world's biggest corporation," said Harry slowly. "You wouldn't think the planet needed that many drills."

"'There isn't one problem, there isn't one ill, that cannot be solved with 'drill baby, drill'!'" quoted Dudley chirpily. "Uh, sorry, Harry."

"And why are you even being polite to me?" asked Harry. "I can't remember anything in particular that would have made you stop being a total wanker to me, to be honest."

"Well, you're not my friend or anything. But I owe it to you to try and be nice, right?" said Dudley. "Because - because I learned and grew as a person?"

"Right," said Harry, grabbing a t-shirt from where it had been lying over the back of his chair. "Give me that."

Dudley handed him the lamp, and Harry, holding it gingerly in the folds of the t-shirt, cast a series of preliminary investigative spells. It was undoubtedly a powerful magical artefact, but beyond that he could tell very little. Finally, feeling rather silly, he rubbed it vigorously against his uniform sleeve.

 

As soon as he did so, several things happened almost at once.

A billow of bright blue smoke rose up from the lamp's spout, filling out almost at once into a strikingly beautiful (though still very blue) youth with a mop of unruly dark curls, big eyes, and pouting lips, wearing nothing except a pair of billowy trousers, curly-toed slippers, wrist-cuffs, and a horrified expression.

The blue youth intoned, in a voice of surpassing clarity, "I am the genie of the lamp. Master, your wish is my command. What is your will?"

And Harry dropped the lamp and doubled over in his chair, clutching his head.

"Are you ok?" Dudley asked, bending forwards to pat Harry's arm. As soon as he touched Harry, it became obvious that this allowed him too to see the genie, since he leapt backwards, knocked over his chair, and ended up sprawled in a pile of sadly flickering Daily Prophets. "There was a genie!" he said. "I told you so! Where did it go?"

"I'm still here, you imbecile," said the genie crossly, folding its arms. It was bobbing in mid-air, still looking mildly horrified and rather chilly.

Harry groaned and looked up, scrubbing his hands through his hair until it stood up most alarmingly. "It's still here, Dudley," he said wearily. "And it really does seem to be some kind of - of cartoon genie. You can probably only see it when you're touching me."

"Is it dangerous?" asked Dudley, scrabbling further back into the newspapers.

Harry squinted up at the genie, which had floated up towards the ceiling and was pouting with exceptional force. "No, I don't think so," he said.

"Oh, thanks so very much,” said the genie. "Master."

"Don't call me that," said Harry flatly.

"I don't have any choice, believe me," said the genie. "Master."

Dudley, who'd been following Harry's half of this conversation with alarm, repeated his question.

"Definitely not in the way you're thinking," said Harry. "But your boss probably is. Let me guess, all the odd things that have been happening are things she'd like, right? Or bad things happening to people she doesn't?"

"Yeah," said Dudley. "I suppose. How do you know?"

"Because I'm pretty sure that her brother is my boss," said Harry. "Gilderoy Lockhart, Saviour of the Wizarding World."

Up near the ceiling, the genie made a sound very like a snort. Harry ignored it.

"I wouldn't go into work for a while, Dudley," he said. "Ms Lockhart is dangerous."

"But she doesn't have her genie any more, right?" said Dudley. "I lifted it while she was on the phone with the prime minister! And there's no way she could tell it was me, right?"

Harry tugged at his hair a bit more. "Right," he said to the genie. "Do you have to do anything I say?"

"Yes, master," said the genie, sounding, Harry noticed, carefully blank.

"Do I just have ... unlimited wishes?" he asked. "Are there any catches or drawbacks I should know about? Any limitations? I, er, command you to tell me. Truthfully."

"I am bound to grant your wishes for so long as you remain my master," said the genie. "I cannot bring the dead back to life, or permanently go against the laws of magic. And I am bound to this lamp."

Harry swallowed.

 

"Are you sure you're all right there?" asked Dudley, levering himself out of his newspaper nest.

"I'm fine," said Harry. "Where would you most like to go on holiday?"

"The Bahamas, I guess," said Dudley. "Why?"

"Because you're going there now. I'll let you know when it's safe to come back."

"I can't leave my job!" said Dudley. "I just made regional manager!"

"Do you want to be an ottoman?" asked Harry.

Dudley gulped and shook his head.

"Great. Then buy a return ticket and book a hotel as soon as you get out of here. Money isn't really an object with how much you get paid at Grunnings Global, right?"

"I get paid a whole lot," said Dudley, nodding.

"Right," said Harry. "Pay for everything in advance, though, because that might be changing soon. I'll make sure your boss can't find you."

 

And he all but shoved the protesting Dudley out of the door. "Call me if you have any problems!" he shouted after him. Then he pulled the door closed and sank down with his back against it to sit on the floor, staring up at the genie. "Can you ensure that no entity that wishes my cousin Dudley Dursley any harm will be able to find or follow him?" he asked.

"Your wish is my command, Master," said the genie.

"Ok," said Harry. "Then I wish it."

The genie waggled its fingers importantly, sending out a shower of tiny silver stars. "It is done, Master," it said.

"And Ms Gwendolyn Lockhart needs dealing with, I suppose. Can you make her forget about your existence? And at least limit any magic she's set in motion so that she doesn't do any permanent damage?"

The genie wavered in and out of focus for a moment, like a picture on an old television. "It is done, Master," it said. "Depending, of course, on your definition of permanent damage."

"Right," said Harry. "Great." He tipped his head back against the door and stared up at the genie. "How did Lockhart even wake up?" he said, half to himself. "I haven't even really thought about him since second year."

Up by the ceiling, the genie bobbed silently. The light from the Grunnings advertisement was turning it a rather sickly mauve.

"Can you tell me?" Harry asked. "Anything at all about Lockhart, in fact?"

The genie looked away. "Gilderoy Lockhart," it recited, "Saviour of the Wizarding World, Order of Merlin, First Class -"

"Anything true," said Harry.

The genie bobbed uncertainly. "He has rather astonishing hair, Master?" it offered, sounding a little desperate.

"Anything true and useful," Harry qualified.

The genie was silent.

"Answer me."

"No, Master," said the genie. "I can't." Its purple-blue face looked pinched and furious.

"So, what?" said Harry. "He's still your actual M - the person really in control of you?"

The genie drifted downwards and shrugged unhappily. "I presume so," it said grudgingly. "But I really haven't the faintest idea. You shouldn't have been able to get the lamp to do anything in the first place, Master." The bile in its voice was unmistakable.

"Right," said Harry. "So I suppose you can't tell me anything much about what is actually going on, then."

"Full marks, Master," said the genie, rather smugly.

"And I suppose you wouldn't be at all interested in the news that the current Minister for Magic has a whole box of screw loose," said Harry. “His wife’s more or less running the show.”

"I am interested, Master. The Minister for Magic is a very important individual," said the genie thickly. It floated up again towards the ceiling.

Harry stared up at the genie, frowning. The candles on the wall behind it, pale in the light from the Grunnings sign, glowed gently blue, as if underwater. He shook his head and levered himself up.

“We’re going on a trip,” he told the genie. “You can apparate yourself, right?”

The genie shrugged, its improbably beautiful face blank.

“Right then,” said Harry, picking up the ridiculous golden lamp and grabbing his cloak from the back of the door. “Let’s go.”

 

Harry materialised in the middle of a sour-smelling little courtyard, the genie bobbing behind him like a Muggle balloon and lending a faint blue sheen to the wet flagstones underfoot.

“Wizards can’t see you either, yeah?” Harry asked.

The genie, staring up at the tall and rickety buildings enclosing the courtyard, to all appearances propping each other up and creaking a little as they did so, nodded briefly. It was still raining softly, and its form was shot through with lines of blue water, lit up as if by neon. It raised its hand to its face and stared, apparently fascinated.

Harry shrugged and shoved the lamp into his cloak pocket, making for one of the sagging doorways that opened onto the courtyard like so many cross little mouths.

Inside, soggy wooden stairs led upwards in unsteady ziz-zags, lit at intervals by little green dabs of light buzzing sadly in the kind of lanterns you bought ten to the galleon. The air smelt of musty washing, or possibly simply of rot. Every so often a high cackle or burst of tinny music came through the air, and the building groaned gently around them as if subsiding in very slow motion.

The attic room, when Harry finally reached it, was in a terrible state. Shelves of potions still lined the end walls, and the sloping roof was still moulting tacked-up pages of magical notations, all written in the same sloppy hand. In the middle of the floor, a magical fire flickered precariously above the floorboards, the cauldron above it set high enough out of the way that whatever was in it had congealed without burning. But there were Auror evidence tags spellotaped to half the objects in sight, and, most incongruously of all, a large purple armchair with ornate gold fitments pulled up to the fire in the middle of the room. It even had a purple footstool in front of it.

Harry rolled his eyes and shrank it. “It’s still technically evidence, I’m hoping,” he told the genie over his shoulder. “But to be honest I’ll be quite happy if I never see another vaguely purple thing in my entire life.”

The genie said nothing. It was hovering by the door, looking as if it wanted nothing more than to bolt back into the dank stairwell.

Harry stepped over the shrunken armchair and leant over the desk pressed up against the far wall. It was almost entirely covered with drifts of scrolls and parchments, with the odd empty tea cup poking up out of the wreckage like an iceberg. The same frantic handwriting chased over the pages, sometimes literally; strings of figures recalculating themselves under his eyes with little shivers of ink.

 

Wand magic, he read. See Thurgood’s Compendium. Comp Bannerjee’s second article. See Ollivander. This last had been crossed out, he saw, and rewritten.

Problems with large-scale deployment.

Wishing well. Time-turners.

Spells no object, but if wand not strong enough. Problems.

Socks. Quills. Milk and sugar. Fob off Pansy.

Memory charms.

The Manor. Clothes for Mother. Position. Position. Problems.

A partial connection with the Elder Wand. Leverage?

 

Harry looked up from the papers and sighed. “Do you have anything to add?” he called out to the genie. “Because this may make more sense than the last time I was here, but it still doesn’t make all that much from where I'm standing.”

“Why are we here?” asked the genie. “Master?” Its chiming voice rose as it bobbed closer. “The last time?”

Harry nodded and smiled, perhaps a little viciously. “Oh yes,” he said. “When I was here with Ron? Investigating?” He turned to look at the genie over his shoulder. “Ollivander came straight to us, you know,” he said. “He thought you were getting in over your head. Obsessed, he said. Reckon he had a point.”

The genie bobbed by the fire, saying nothing.

Harry picked up a sheet of parchment. “However,” he read out, “in exchange the caster would effectively render themselves a magical object, subject to their owner until released.” Harry shook his head. “A magical object,” he repeated. “That always goes well.”

The genie whirled closer, a flurry of lurid blue. “Fuck you, Master,” it spat. “I didn’t know it would be like this!”

Harry laid the parchment back down. “I’ll just bet you didn’t, Malfoy,” he said.

“How did you know?” asked the genie sullenly.

“Well,” said Harry. “Neither you nor Lockhart are exactly subtle. Merlin’s balls, Malfoy, can you please stop looking like some sort of Disney prince?”

“I don’t even know what that is,” said the genie, in a voice that was suddenly as posh and snotty as it had ever been at Hogwarts. "But very well, I suppose. Master."

 

It floated down until its translucent feet were nearly touching the floor, and turned without further notice into a translucent blue version of Draco Malfoy, still wearing the same decidedly skimpy outfit and looking all haughty white-blue and glowy, like a cross pilot-light. "And it was a Caravaggio, as a matter of fact. One of history's more famous Mu-Muggleborn artists." He folded his arms and stared fixedly at Harry's ear. "You were of course lying, Master," he said. "About Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy. Weren't you?"

"I really, really wasn't," said Harry. "Your dad's a right mess."

He stared across the grubby little attic at Malfoy, who was looking tall and thin and half-naked and miserable. And blue.

 

"And that's really why you did it, isn't it? Whatever it was, exactly. So your dad could finally be Minister for Magic and your mum could, what? Live in the Manor and hold tea parties? So that everyone could forget that the Malfoy name is mud?” Harry shook his head. “Lockhart is going to get bored of redecorating at some point and decide he wants the top job, you know. The first thing he did was put a giant gold statue of himself in the Ministry atrium.”

“I know,” said Malfoy dully. “I put it there.” He waggled one thin blue hand, sending out a shower of little blue sparks. “You can do a lot when you’re not held to specific spells.”

“You must have been working on this for years, Malfoy,” said Harry. “Practically since the trials.” He looked over at the tiny purple armchair. “I bet you contacted Lockhart, didn’t you. The memory stuff must have been his idea. You couldn’t change what happened, but you could change what people remembered about it.” Dudley’s odd friendliness came to mind. “Not so much what they felt, maybe.”

A large and shiny black beetle slowly extracted itself from a drift of papers and began to make its way towards the wall, its stiff little legs scrabbling surprisingly loudly over rolls of parchment.

 

“Why in Merlin’s name did you do this to yourself, Malfoy?” Harry asked. “Your parents are miserable, you know.”

"At least they're where they should be, Master," Malfoy said. He swung round and began to speak to Harry's face, very fast and very clipped. "At least they aren't living in a horrible little flat with all our belongings shrunk down like dolls house furniture and put away in boxes, with Mother taking in charmwork under a false name and their son and heir sweeping up after hours in a potion shop down Knockturn Alley! At least my father doesn't remember Azkaban! At least they aren't getting spat at in the street! I never thought Lockhart's crazy plan could work, but what you're telling me is that it did, because believe you me, Master, the amount of faith I have in your ability to provide accurate reports of my parents' mental state is minimal at best. I provided for them to live in the manner to which they are accustomed, and I did it the only way I could. You and your friends should be grateful that one of my wishes was for them to ... to change their minds about Muggles and Muggleborns. They aren't being like they used to about that, are they?" He shook his head. "Not that you'd remember, of course. I don't even know how you've worked out as much as you have. I might have to revise my estimation of your intelligence upwards."

Harry shrugged. "Don't strain yourself. I remembered everything the instant I touched the lamp."

 

Malfoy stared at him. Even though it seemed unlikely that he needed to breathe in his current state, his ribby blue chest was heaving. His small high nipples, Harry noticed, were a darker blue, almost violet. On his left arm, the Dark Mark was quite visible, picked out in purple like a bruise.

"Do you have to wear that ridiculous outfit?" Harry asked.

“Yes,” said Malfoy. “Lockhart let his sister choose the final design. He’s quite devoted to her, you know. It’s really rather touching. Not to mention, I could say the same for you.”

Harry looked down at himself. Under the cloak, his tea boy costume, which made him look like a cross between an American lobby boy from the 1930s and some sort of fancy waiter, was just as silly as it had been the last time he remembered really thinking about it. Which was yesterday and not at the same time.

Yesterday, he and Ron had finally collared a dealer in particularly nasty potions.

Yesterday, he had spent seven hours pouring tea and doing some light dusting.

Yesterday, he had narrowly avoided firecalling Ginny and trying to suggest that, if they gave it another go, he could try very hard not to be so gay. As a matter of fact, he’d done that twice. The two memories hovered over each other, one sharp and exquisitely embarrassing; the other fuzzy, notional, and exquisitely embarrassing.

Yesterday, he had adjusted the precise set of Gilderoy Lockhart's lapels before levitating an obscene amount of monogrammed luggage through the Ministerial Floo and seeing Lockhart off on his twelfth triumphal tour of Britain, just to reassure the populace that their Saviour is still out there, he would say. Anything, anything at all, for my fans.

 

"It won't last, you know," Harry said. "It's not even lasted a day. It is only a day, right?"

Malfoy nodded.

"People are enough themselves not to be happy when you plonk them down in a new life. Nothing’s in the right place. Places that should be there aren’t.” Harry flapped his hand at the attic. “You’re lucky nobody suddenly remembered that your little laboratory belonged to them, or something. Hermione already left her job. So did I, actually. What gave you the right to play with people like that? To play with magic like that? That won't last either, you know. You'd need a lot more firepower than you or Lockhart have -" Harry broke off.

But Malfoy was already talking. "What do you mean, a new life? For Granger? It was only supposed to affect Lockhart and my parents. I mean, aside from everyone getting some new memories about who exactly won the war. And you, of course. He really seems to have something against you."

"And you," said Harry. "Your parents don't even remember you, do they. I wonder what they'd say about that, if they could say anything." He thought about the sports section of the Daily Prophet, plastered with pictures of Ginny's miraculous goal. "Changing a few lives and, oh, only the memories of everybody in Wizarding Britain has a knock-on effect, I imagine," he said. "Though not very obviously for Ginny, apparently."

Malfoy shrugged uneasily. "Lockhart did wish for you to have no friends," he said softly. "He wanted that specifically. I suppose it only makes sense that Granger and Weasley would be especially affected."

"I thought it would be something like that," said Harry bitterly. "Thanks so very much. But it's not just them, you know. It was people I don't even know. Lockhart obviously had no idea what he was doing, which is no surprise. How did he even wake up, anyway? Was that you as well?"

"His older sister checked him out of the Janus Thickey Ward and tried some Muggle treatment on him," said Malfoy. "That's all I know. Master."

"I see," said Harry. He pulled the lamp, golden and glowing, out of his cloak pocket. His head was still aching a little, whether from having a whole other set of memories poured into it or from suddenly coming into possession of a fake genie. He told himself not to notice it. “What’s it like inside this thing?” he asked Malfoy, patting the lamp.

“Dark,” said Malfoy. “I’d prefer to stay out of it, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Actually,” said Harry, “I wish that you were free of the lamp and returned to your normal self.” He rubbed the lamp against his sleeve, in case that would help, and waited expectantly.

 

Nothing happened, except for Malfoy gawping a bit.

“Ah well,” said Harry. “Worth a try.” He looked down at the lamp. "You really are linked to this?" he asked Malfoy. "You have to come back to it?"

"I can't even go that far from it unless you order me to, Master," said Malfoy. He was squinting at Harry as if it was him who’d suddenly turned blue and transparent. “Thank you for trying,” he said, grudgingly. “I’d like to say it’s the thought that counts, but, well.”

“Yeah,” said Harry. "Well. Lockhart's not going to call you back out of the blue, is he? No pun intended."

"I don't know, Master. When the lamp was in his sister's possession, he would have had to touch it to regain control."

"So the lamp stays with me, then," said Harry. "Can I shrink it without messing something up?"

Malfoy nodded.

Harry shrank the lamp to the size of a galleon, and, after a bit of thought, hung it around his neck on a piece of newspaper transfigured into a length of string. Malfoy eyed the proceedings with an air of vague alarm.

"How fetching, Master," he said, faintly.

"You know, Malfoy," said Harry bracingly, "I can't believe you sold yourself into indentured servitude to Gilderoy Lockhart, of all people. Wasn't bowing the knee to Voldemort bad enough? You had to find someone horrible and trivial?"

Malfoy said nothing.

"Never mind," said Harry. "Come with me. We're going to check on something else." And without waiting for Malfoy to say a word, he turned on his heel and apparated, leaving the papers lining the dusty attic flapping briskly behind him. 

 

\--

 

"Are you serious, Master?" Malfoy asked.

They had materialised outside the gates of Hogwarts, and Harry had borrowed - or 'borrowed' - a school broom from the broom-shed. He'd flown across the lake, Malfoy bobbing beside him like an oversize will-o-the-wisp, and now they stood - or floated - on the island in the middle, looking down at the white marble lid of Dumbledore's tomb.

"Or have you just gone stark staring nuts?" he went on. "Master. Perhaps a bit of light grave-robbery is just how you spend your evenings?"

"Shut up, Malfoy," said Harry, and finished running through the intricate series of spells that undid the protections on the tomb. There weren’t a great many people who knew what had been cast to protect the tomb; Harry did only because Hermione had been involved in designing the enchantments. Lockhart had probably used her, he thought bitterly. Her or McGonagall. He would, of course, have had the element of surprise.

He levitated the lid to one side and raised his wand over the mouth of the tomb. "Lumos."

Harry looked at what was in the tomb for just long enough to assure himself that the Elder Wand was no longer there. He tried summoning it just in case, but nothing answered. How did you even know if you were still bound to a wand, in any case? Hermione would know. His Hermione. Who, like his Ron, hardly even existed at the moment. He swallowed and set the lid of the tomb carefully back into place.

 

Around them, the clear summer air of the island was full of lake smells and night-noises. The twilight was thickening, the air turning the complicated blackish-green of deep, weed-filled water. Next to him, Malfoy looked ugly and garish, like the glowing Grunnings sign.

Harry clenched his hands at his side, until he felt the skin strain over his knuckles; his fingernails bite into his palms. "That's why he needed you, isn't it? You were once its master. He's used some kind of weird wandlore to make you into a channel for it, or something. Am I right? Did you even know?"

Malfoy was silent.

"Are you even alive?" asked Harry. "Are you some kind of - some kind of fragment of yourself, tied to this stupid lamp?"

Malfoy pointed to his mouth, and Harry remembered when he'd told him to shut up.

"That's useful, I suppose," he said. "Wish I'd been able to do that at school. You can speak now."

"He never said anything about this to me, Master," said Malfoy. "That I remember."

"Well, when it comes to Lockhart," said Harry, "that covers a multitude of sins." He scuffed at the ground with his regulation Saviour's tea boy shoe (patent leather; very shiny). Malfoy's fluorescent blue light made everything look a bit like a crime scene on one of Hermione's Muggle police dramas. They'd be pulling the body from the water any minute now.

 And he'd have to get the Elder Wand off Lockhart, Harry thought, scuffing up more bits of Scotland. Or break his hold on it somehow. And for that, he'd need, what? A swift Imperius? A dose of Veritaserum? Lockhart travelled with a squad of twelve Hit Wizards, Harry knew. It had always seemed like overkill before.

 

"I don't suppose you can take me right to wherever Lockhart is now?" he asked Malfoy. "I mean, right next to him?"

Malfoy shook his head. "I can't act directly against him, Master," he said, with utter certainty that appeared to surprise even him.

Harry sighed. Visions of apparating directly into Lockhart's doubtless hideously opulent hotel room and forcing him to undo his stupid, dangerous spell floated across his mind's eye. Watch and wait, mate, he heard an imaginary Ron saying, fuzzy with stakeout concealment charms, freckled hand on his elbow. Watch and wait. Or Harry could drag Lockhart out of his overstuffed hotel bed and shake him until everything went back to normal, so that Harry could go into work in the morning and sit down across from Ron and talk about how to deal with the al-Farid family ghoul or the Swinson murder case, so that he could lift up his stupid Chudley Cannons mug and drink a cup of stupid, over-brewed tea that, he now remembered very clearly, had been poured quite happily by countless Ministry employees with their own two hands as the teapot and cups floated along their pre-spelled route round the Ministry.

"You had to have your own sugar, though," Harry murmured.

"Eh?" Malfoy said. "Master?" It was clear he was filled with new misgivings about Harry's sanity.

"I can't believe I filled out those resignation forms in triplicate," said Harry. "I'm going to have to go back to work tomorrow like nothing happened. And then I'm going to have to carry on working like nothing happened until Lockhart comes back from his ridiculous victory tour. Which, since he at least knows it's the very first one, may take a while." He swung himself astride the rickety school broom and rose up over the lake. "Of course," he told Malfoy's electric blue face, "you'll be coming too. Think of it as a work experience placement."

 

\--

 

No-one, it turned out, was at all surprised to see Harry back at work the next day.

"Well, you are the Saviour's tea boy," said the clerk at the employment desk, stamping Harry's painstakingly filled-out resignation forms with a large red 'CANCELLED' and giving him an understanding smile. "It only makes sense."

Almost the most difficult part of the day, Harry found, was making sure nobody touched him and got a glimpse of the grumpy blue spectre following him around in a flurry of sharp elbows and scandalous baggy trousers. Or, as Malfoy himself said in long-suffering tones, when Harry mentioned them for the second time in as many hours, "As a matter of fact, Master, they are called harem pants. They're hardly Oxford bags."

"Harem pants," said Harry, blinking. "Harem pants. You really do love to give me ammunition, don't you, Malfoy?"

 

He had to admit, though, it made how they were nearly see-through make a lot more sense than it had at first. You'd need that, wouldn't you, in a harem? For purposes of allure and suchlike.

Harry cleared his throat and narrowly avoided pouring tea into the lap of a particularly burly Unspeakable. Behind the Unspeakable's head, Malfoy sighed extravagently.

"You're the worst tea server I have ever seen, Master," he informed Harry, who was pressed to the back of a lift in which three other Ministry employees were arguing over a failed concealment charm in Bermondsey. The Obliviators were being worked off their feet, they were saying. Terrible business.

The lift emptied at the next floor, and Malfoy took the opportunity to press his point. "Awful," he told Harry. "Just amateurish. And you're meant to have years of imaginary experience at this! Years, Master." He shook his blue head sadly. "At least you're decorative," he told Harry, just as the lift doors opened and a couple of grim-faced Obliviators crowded in.

Harry, who'd been about to ask what on earth he meant, clamped his mouth back shut.

 

The absolutely most difficult part of the day, Harry discovered after bringing tea to the Minister at four o'clock, was how after seeing his father Malfoy stopped talking. He could have ordered Malfoy to say something, he supposed, but it was bad enough being called master the whole time. Which, Harry was fairly certain, should probably bother him more than it did. He wondered, not for the first time, just what exactly the long-term effects were from having a part of an evil wizard's soul lodged in you since you were a baby. Absolutely sod all, Harry James Potter, he heard his Hermione saying. There is no compelling evidence whatsoever that it has any lingering results in the slightest! Then she'd spoil the effect by going on to talk about psychological impacts and the usefulness of counselling, and Ron would mutter something about how he'd had his mum's love in him too, so much that it'd burned Quirrel up where he stood. Which Harry remembered very well, thank you.

So he looked up at Malfoy, floating along next to him with his lips in a prim line and not a sneer to be seen, and said nothing.

The next day when Harry went to the Minister's office, Malfoy stayed floating outside. Harry supposed he could pop off to report back to Lockhart or something while he was conjuring the lemon for Mrs Malfoy's tea, but somehow it seemed hardly likely. Five years of Auror work, and five years of imaginary tea-serving, had given Harry a pretty good handle on anticipating when people were going to hold their cups out, so to speak.

 

Three days in, Malfoy was holding his metaphorical cup out like a begging bowl. "I owe you an apology, Master," he said stiffly, one evening after work. Harry was sitting at his wobbly table eating a takeaway kebab, and Malfoy was sort of hovering gently in a sitting position over the chair opposite, trying not to look at the kebab too closely.

"Oh?" said Harry, swallowing. "Just one?"

"I owe a great many people an apology," said Malfoy. "More or less everyone in the country, as a matter of fact." He gave a dry little laugh. "Including my parents."

"Well," said Harry. "Your parents are just about the only people in the country who're likely to understand whatever the hell it was you were trying to prove. Let alone forgive you for it."

"If my father never recovers his wits, both of them may find themselves unable to forgive me," said Malfoy tightly. "He was not well after Azkaban, but nothing like that. Nothing."

Harry, who was of the private opinion that having an addle-brained Lucius Malfoy as Lockhart's fake Minister for Magic was one of the few saving graces of the situation, tried to chew the rest of his way through his kebab in an unobtrusive manner.

 

"You eat like a barbarian, Master," said Malfoy at length. "It's horrifying. I will have nightmares."

"You don't even sleep," said Harry, deeply relieved to have avoided holding some kind of ex-Death Eater therapy session at his kitchen table. "I've noticed."

As a matter of fact, he'd not so much noticed as bolted upright, heart racing from a nightmare of his own in which none of his friends knew him and he could speak only in parseltongue. Seeing Malfoy's glowing blue hand reaching towards his face hadn't much helped matters.

"I was going to try and wake you up," Malfoy had said huffily. "You looked as if you needed it."

Harry had taken in that Malfoy had, apparently, been watching him sleep, groaned, rolled over, and pulled the pillow over his head. Malfoy had floated at his bedside like some kind of very gay nightlight and, Harry was sure, had actually tutted.

 

Sharing a flat with Malfoy was very gay all round, Harry was discovering. Malfoy looked very gay in his harem pants, and Harry was increasingly sure that he was very gay, just in general. When Malfoy had stuck his floaty blue nose over Harry's gloppy pot of boiling porridge and informed him that "this looks like semen tastes, Master," Harry took this as a decided hint. Except Malfoy apparently didn't think much of the taste of semen. But you could still be gay and not like the actual taste, of course. Harry clamped down on the imaginary version of his Hermione before she could give him a lecture on sexual orientation(s), and was left with Malfoy floating around his flat and following him every day at work, like a very blue, very gay shadow.

He became, if anything, even worse at pouring tea.

Because Malfoy wasn't just always there, he had to do everything Harry said. Everything. Well, you couldn't not think about it, Harry thought. And even though, after that time when he'd told Malfoy to shut up, Harry had been careful not to order him to do anything directly, Harry had had at least two very vivid dreams on the subject. Dreams he couldn't do anything about, because although, whenever he'd woken up with night terrors or an aching erection since the first Nightmare Incident, Malfoy had been glowing away discretely in the next room, Harry couldn't bring himself to jerk off with him right there. Malfoy, he felt, would know.

 

\--

 

"So, Master," Malfoy said thoughtfully one afternoon, as Harry threaded his way cautiously through banks of grasping, probably poisonous plants in the Ministry greenhouses, "when do we get to the fame and fortune, then?"

Harry stopped dead, causing a gentle teacup pile-up behind him. Malfoy, floating a few steps to the rear of the tea convoy, poked them back into place with an insubstantial finger.

"Before or after Lockhart gets back from his cross-country jaunt? I know you've got something of a track record when it comes to defeating the forces of evil - or even just the forces of really-quite-evil - but I would still counsel a little early indulgence, just in case. As you told your large pink cousin, gather ye roses while ye may. Or words to that effect."

"You mean," said Harry, fending off an inquiring tendril from a fleshy purple vine, "when am I going to ask you for a wish?"

Malfoy nodded. "Please don't say "never"," he said. "My heart can only stand so much."

"All right then," said Harry. "When it's useful. For me. All I care about at the moment is getting things back to normal. I'm not about to get side-tracked into some ridiculous chain of wishes that ends up with me with a sausage stuck to the end of my nose."

Malfoy looked piously up out at the bespelled blue sky beyond the greenhouses. He put out a hand, fending Harry off. "No, no," he said. "Don't tell me. I assure you, nothing you could say about why you believe this to be a likely outcome is going to be as good as what I'm now envisaging."

"For Merlin's sake, Malfoy," said Harry. "It's from a Muggle fairy tale. We read it at primary school."

"If that's your story, Master," said Malfoy kindly, "then you stick to it. We won't say another word about the matter."

"Harem pants," said Harry, darkly, turning away.

As he pulled his way out of the vines (covered, he realised belatedly, with little suckers), he heard Malfoy singsonging softly behind him, "But, Master, you like the harem pants."

Harry decided not to notice.

 

\--

 

At the end of the first week, Harry cracked. "I'm calling in Hermione," he told Malfoy. "I've cast every divining spell I can think of that could lead me to the Elder Wand, and we've got just about every book on wishes and wishcraft in the Wizarding World piled up in my flat."

This was almost literally true. Harry's wish - a useful one, Malfoy had said glumly - had brought so many books tumbling into Harry's bedsit from libraries and archives the world over that they'd been forced to do some quick and dirty work with wizarding space before Harry was buried alive. As it was, Mrs Panjabi had been highly suspicious, and Harry was fairly certain that he'd never see half his belongings again.

"Master," said Malfoy quietly, "you do realise that this world's Hermione Granger does not think of you as her friend? It was a specific condition of Lockhart's wishes. He really is quite a petty man."

"I know," said Harry. "Believe me. But if nothing else, keeping any version of Hermione out of a collection like this should be some kind of crime. And anyway, I think I know how I can convince her."

"Convincing her might not be good for her," said Malfoy.

But he held his peace after that, until Harry, heading for the Floo, said quickly over his shoulder, "Oh, and Ron, of course."

"They aren't even together in this world!" said Malfoy. "Master. This isn't some kind of matchmaking opportunity. Master!"

 

He was still seething quietly in the background when Hermione, perched amid stacks of books, reached out a hand and made as if to pat Harry's arm gently. He yanked it back out of her reach. "Oh, dear," she said. "I know things may not have gone quite as you'd expect in your life given how it began, Harry, and I wish now that we'd talked more at school after second year, but I think you need to make an appointment with a mediwitch or wizard. This kind of fantasizing is unhealthy."

"Really unhealthy, mate," said Ron awkwardly, trying not to crush a pile of scrolls. "You need help. Is there anyone you could call? While we get that mediwizard sorted out for you?"

"But I took Veritaserum," said Harry blankly. "Right in front of you."

"Frankly, mate," said Ron, "that's part of the problem. It's really not good that you actually believe all that stuff."

"Fine," said Harry. His skin felt itchy, too large for him, and he could feel Malfoy at his shoulder. Sneering, probably, like he did in school. He resisted the urge to turn and look. That would be the final straw, talking to an invisible genie. He hefted a book bound in suspiciously tattoo-covered parchment, anchors and roses, opening it at the place he'd marked. "Use this spell, then," he said, shoving the book towards Hermione. "It lets you search all the spells your wand has ever cast. I suggest you search for memory charms. Or spells you'd use in battle."

"What do you expect her to find, then?" asked Ron, sounding exasperated. "The greatest hits from when we all battled He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? Everyone knows that Lockhart defeated him in single combat."

"How, exactly?" asked Harry.

Hermione's head was bent over the book, but she raised it to say, "Gilderoy Lockhart fought at great duel with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named at Hogwarts, a duel that lasted almost a full day. Both wizards were almost evenly matched, and the scars of their conflict can be seen on the castle walls to this day." Blinking a little, she broke off, apparently realising that she and Ron had been speaking in perfect unison.

"Well," said Harry. "That was spooky. Can you described it any other way?"

Hermione's mouth worked, and she frowned furiously.

"Where were you when this duel-for-the-ages was going on, even? Can you remember that?"

"We were - we must have been safe. Lockhart keeps us safe." This was Ron, looking rather as if he couldn't believe his own mouth.

"Ron," said Harry gently, "how did Fred die?"

This had a dramatic effect. Ron went so white his freckles showed up like earth through melting snow, and he stood up suddenly, brushing off his knees. "Well," he said shortly, "I think I'm done here. Will you be all right, Hermione?"

"Oh, Ron," said Hermione. "I'll be fine -"

 

But Ron was already making his way around stacks of books to the Floo.

Harry watched him go. "Can you remember just how Fred died, Hermione?" he asked. "Not when, how?"

Hermione pursed her lips. "I'll do the spell," she said. "I presume I can take the book with me?"

Harry nodded. "It's, ah, borrowed, though," he said. "So look after it."

"I'm fairly certain," said Hermione, standing up and looking round, "that it's safer elsewhere than here." And she made for the Floo, clutching the tattooed book to her chest.

"Well," said Harry, when the roar of the Floo had died down. "That went well."

Malfoy remained, wisely, silent.

 

\--

 

That night, Harry dreamed of Malfoy again. Human Malfoy, like he'd been in school, or afterwards, at the trials, grey shadows pressed under his eyes like thumbprints, long white fingers clutching at the bedsheets. Harry was working his arsehole open with two fingers, and Malfoy was smiling a sharp smile, like he'd just won something.

"My wish," he was saying, "My wish is your command."

Harry shuffled a little further up the bed, cool clean sheets under them already tacky with sweat, and pushed his prick into Malfoy. Slowly, so slowly. "You know what I want," he said, and shoved forwards.

Human Malfoy's mouth opened in a pink little gasp and he said, quite clearly, "Oh yes, I do. Harry." Then the thin scars on his chest opened up like rips in the skin of a ripe puffball, and blue powder came out in great airy gouts as he sank away, smile and all, into soft bright blue rot under Harry's grasping fingers.

 

Harry jerked awake again, hair snarled up like an angry cat, mouth gaping and dry.

This time, Malfoy's glowing blue shape had been leaning over an open book. He could turn the pages, he said, if he concentrated hard enough. He came drifting over, a little diffidently, across the stretched-out wizarding space of Harry's book-filled bedroom.

"All right there, Master?" he asked. "Dreaming of the good old days?"

Harry stared up at him wordlessly. Now that he was looking for it, the sectumsempra scars were quite visible, thin pale lines across Malfoy's blue chest.

Malfoy crossed his arms over them. "Really, Master," he said. "Didn't they teach you to be a bit more subtle with your ogling in Gryffindor? I thought you were the House of parfit gentil knights and so forth."

"Are you even still alive?" asked Harry. "Answer me."

"Well," said Malfoy quietly. "I see. Master. I really don't know. It was my understanding that the procedure Lockhart, ah, suggested was permanent. And I am now, as I'm sure has not escaped your notice, very much like a ghost. Rather less visible than your average ghost, in fact."

"'Suggested'," said Harry. "Did he force you?"

"Well, he didn't exactly give me a choice, Master," said Malfoy. "But I wouldn't want you to think that I wasn't quite enthusiastic, once he'd explained himself. Enough wishes to set my parents up in style, and I went along like a lamb."

Harry shook his head. "Malfoy," he said, "you made your father Minister for Magic."

"As I said," said Malfoy blandly. "In style. Some of us, Master, possess ambition."

"If that's what we're calling it nowadays, Malfoy," said Harry, and punched his pillows back into shape. He tried until morning to get back to sleep, dreaming in slippery dribs and drabs of Malfoy's human face.

 

\--

 

Ron and Hermione came back to the flat two days later, pale-faced. Hermione was clutching the tattooed book, and Ron was in full Auror field gear.

"Tell us your crazy story again, then," said Ron roughly. "Me and Hermione have been talking. And she did your spell."

"Right," said Harry, who had just got back from work himself and was still in his full tea boy uniform. "Coffee?"

 

 "So," said Ron, a little later. "Mostly what I got from your story is that whatever happens, my little sister always ends up Britain's best and youngest pro Chaser. And she always dumps you flat. That's what I call good news!" And he smiled at Harry, a little crookedly.

Harry smiled back.

 

When Ron and Hermione asked to see Lockhart's secret weapon, though, their reaction was, Harry thought, rather unexpected. Ron rolled about in fits of laughter, and Hermione, after a valiant attempt to stifle her giggles, was not much better.

"Straight out of Aladdin!" she said. "I mean, the outfit alone!"

And very little sense could be got out of her for the next five minutes.

Ron's reaction was more straightforward. "Malfoy, you look ridiculous," he said, hanging on to Harry's arm. "Of all the people in the world who could pull that get-up off, let me tell you that you are not one of them. Today," he said solemnly, "is a beautiful day. A day I will remember - Oi!"

Harry, having pulled his arm free, looked at Ron reproachfully. "It's not as if Malfoy chose it," he said. "It was Lockart’s sister’s idea. She’s a Muggle.”

"Yeah, tell me about it," said Ron ruefully. "You wouldn't believe the trouble a Muggle with a magic lamp and no conscience whatsoever can cause. It's a good thing she didn't actually have that much firepower, or she would have caused even more havoc. With the Obliviators as busy as they are, it's a nightmare. One bloke spent a week as an ottoman, can you believe it?"

"Er," said Harry. "Yeah."

 

"At the very least," said Hermione briskly, "Malfoy's transformation strongly suggests that Lockhart created whatever spell, or series of spells, is involved himself. And it has nothing to do with real djinn. The only magic registering here is wand-magic. It's just far stronger than it should be. Stronger than even the Elder Wand should allow."

"Wait," said Harry. "Say that again about the Obliviators?"

"Well, they're really busy," said Ron. "Fogging up the second floor like nobody's business."

"And they're busy because concealment charms and wards are failing all over the place," said Harry. "Aren't they. Lockhart's draining Magical Britain's defences. That's how he's powering his spell. He's draining them away through Malfoy."

Hermione was wringing her hands nervously. "I think, Harry," she said, "that you may very well be right." She breathed out heavily and trapped her hands between her knees. "I know you were being prudent and waiting to poison Lockhart's tea or what have you when he gets back, Harry," she said, "but we really can't afford to wait if that really is the case. I'll have to get into the Department of Mysteries and examine their leystones -"

"If that really is the case," said Ron slowly, "then I think you should free Malfoy. Make him a real boy again. Well, a real boy in fancy knickerbockers."

"I should never have told you about Pinocchio," said Hermione. "And though I agree Malfoy's situation in unconscionable, the fact remains that he's our greatest source of power. As long as Harry hangs onto that lamp, Malfoy is, well. Malfoy is safe from Lockhart."

"Oh, well," said Malfoy to Harry. "That's reassuring."

"Your faith is touching," said Harry. "Really, thanks a lot."

"Are you finished?" said Ron.

Harry looked up at Malfoy. “Actually,” he said, “I wish that Hermione and Ron could see you.”

“Oh, thank you so very much,” said Malfoy petulantly, crossing his arms over his chest.

 

Ron and Hermione stared at him.

“Those knickerbockers aren’t any better the second time round,” said Ron. “Wish him human, Harry, and throw a blanket over him or something.”

Malfoy shrugged his bony blue shoulders. “As a matter of fact, Master tried that already. Freeing me, that is.”

“Harry,” said Hermione. “That’s really admirable.”

Ron frowned up at Malfoy. “Wow," he said thoughtfully. "Making it all the way up to evil henchman number two instead of whatever you were under He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has actually improved your manners."

“Screw you, Weasley,” said Malfoy. “You and your ginger family.”

“Shut it, Malfoy,” said Harry. He scrubbed his hands through his hair, breathing in the fusty smell of books. Even his magically-extended rooms felt small, confining, dusty as the memories Lockhart had given him. “I mean,” he said carefully, “say what you want, but I’ll get pissed off if you insult my friends.”

“I apologise, Weasley,” said Malfoy stiffly. “Bringing your family into it was uncalled for.”

Ron snorted and stared at him some more. “I get the feeling Lockhart took more memories from us than I realised,” he said slowly. He turned to Harry. “Thanks for sticking up for me, mate.”

Harry shrugged and tried to plaster on a smile. Ron-the-friendly-acquaintance was horrible in the way of truly bad dreams, as if reality kept missing a step. “Any time,” he said. “But, yeah, wishing Malfoy back to being a wizard doesn’t work. We tried.”

"I should have guessed,” said Ron. “You said your cousin brought you the lamp straight from Gwendolyn Lockhart, more or less, right Harry?"

Harry nodded. "I don't think Dudley has the brains to lie, though," he said. "Certainly not to my face."

Ron shrugged. "He wouldn't need to. Sounds like he's stupid enough to be set up.”

“Thanks so much,” said Harry. “You know that includes me?”

“No problem,” said Ron, grinning. “What if Lockhart wanted to get the lamp to you? He must know you're the current master of the Elder Wand, Harry. What if he wants to do more than dress you up and set you serving tea? What if he wants to make you a permanent power source like Malfoy here?"

"That really doesn't sound like Lockhart's style, Ron," said Harry. "He'd be more likely to tie up the lamp he's saving for me in a big red bow and present it to me with a brass band playing, or something. None of this sneaky planning business."

"Well," said Hermione. "No-one expected Gilderoy Lockhart to wipe the memories of every single person in Wizarding Britain. But here we quite probably are. I think Ron has a point, Harry."

"But even if he expects you to be the master of the lamp at the moment," Ron said, "he wouldn't expect you to set Malfoy free. Because Lockhart is a selfish git."

"No argument there," said Malfoy.

"You have a point," said Harry. "But I already tried wishing Lockhart's wishes undone. It didn't take, trust me. However Lockhart set up his spell, or his first wishes, he was pretty thorough. Wasn’t he, Malfoy?”

There was no answer. In fact, Harry saw, looking round, there was no Malfoy.

 

\--

 

“Merlin’s balls, Harry,” said Ron. “Calm down, mate. I think you’ve proven that you can’t wish him back.”

“And I know you want to save him,” said Hermione, “but rushing off unprepared will probably just make things worse. If he could just call back Malfoy like that, he probably knows what we’re doing, anyway.”

Harry glared at her. “Believe me,” he said. “I know.” He thumbed at the empty string around his neck and stared down at the latest Daily Prophet, half-hidden under empty cups of coffee. Lockhart’s face beamed up at him from the front page, white teeth gleaming. He'd only been wearing the shrunken lamp for a little over a week, but his neck felt naked without it. “If you were Gilderoy Lockhart,” he said, “where would you hide the Elder Wand?”

Hermione sighed. “Somewhere cloyingly ostentatious,” she said. “I can’t believe I used to have a crush on that creep.”

Ron snorted.

“Say that again,” said Harry.

“Must I? It’s completely mortifying.”

“Not about the crush,” said Harry. “The ‘ostentatious’ thing.” He paused, riffling through his fake memories. They were bland and they were lonely, and they were nothing if not repetitious. And besides a great deal of pouring tea, in recent years they consisted of an awful lot of statue-polishing in the Ministry atrium, where Lockhart’s enormous golden likeness stood, staring soulfully at its upraised wand. “He’d practically put a big red bow on it if he could,” he said, slowly. “We’re going to the Ministry.”

 

\--

 

“This is a trap,” said Ron, standing unhappily by the Ministry Floos. “I’m just saying.”

“For once,” said Malfoy, materialising in front of them, “I agree with Weasley.” He smiled tightly at Harry and snapped his fingers; both Harry’s and Ron’s wands flew into his hand. “I’m sorry, Potter,” he said. “Master finally went to visit his sister, I believe. And it seems that his claim on me supersedes yours.”

“That’s just weird,” muttered Ron. “I never thought I’d be sad to hear him stop with the Master Harry business.”

Malfoy snapped his fingers again. Harry and Ron found themselves stuck in place, staring at him. The Floos roared into life behind them.

“You have got to be joking,” Ron said, through his teeth.

All around them, journalists were pouring out of the Floos, quills aflaunt. And before their horrified eyes, right below his golden statue, Gilderoy Lockhart appeared in a fetching puff of salmon-pink smoke, looking shinier than ever.

 

"Harry, Harry, Harry!" he proclaimed, holding his arms out wide.

The assembled press stared at him, baffled, then turned back towards Harry, who was walking stiffly towards Lockhart, propelled by the invisible genie at his shoulder. Lockhart strode forward to meet him, grinning.

"The Boy Who Lived and then, well, kept on living! And learnt to serve a mean cup of tea, as I and my Ministry co-workers can attest! Harry, it's good to see you!" He paused, smiling for the cameras.

 

Behind him, Harry could see a rather brassy-looking blonde woman, wearing a large jewel-encrusted brooch in the form of a drill. Gwendolyn Lockhart, probably still of Grunnings Global.

 

"I've cut my tour short, you see, to come back to the Ministry in its hour of need,” said Lockhart. “And what better place to start showing my appreciation for my brave and hard-working colleagues than right at the bottom. With our most humble - but no less valued - employee, our loyal tea boy Mr Potter." He beckoned Harry forwards, through the throng of photographers, and squeezed him under one slippery, silk-clad arm. He smelt heavily of something loud and sweet. "Mr Potter, ladies and gentlemen! Without him, the Ministry would be a thirsty place! Give him a big hand, boys and girls!"

Harry felt something poking into the small of his back. "Don't move," hissed Gwendolyn Lockhart into his ear. "I may not have a wand, but a gun does just fine. No sudden movements, that’s a good boy. You set our genie on me, you interfering little twerp. I forgot everything, do you hear me? It was as if I’d woken up in Candyland!”

 

"Now," Lockhart was saying, "You might be wondering why else I've called you here today! Well, there've been all sorts of alarmist headlines in various newspapers - naming no names, Daily Prophet - about falling wards and weakening concealment charms and who knows what else. I'm here to tell you that the situation is entirely under control -"

 

At this, a witch muffled up in heavy robes tumbled through one of the Ministry Floos. "Diagon Alley!" she was yelling at the top of her lungs. "The wards have fallen at Diagon Alley!"

To a man, woman, and goblin, every member of the press present turned and streamed towards the Floos.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Lockhart called after them. "Creatures! Please, don't give in to sensationalism and panic!"

But his words were lost on the crowd of journalists huddling round the Floos, and soon he gave up and he and his sister hustled Harry towards the lifts.

 

“Honestly, Gwendolyn,” Lockhart muttered as they went. “There’s no need for barbaric measures. Our floating blue friend has them under control.”

Gwendolyn sniffed and kept pointing her gun at Harry’s midriff.

 

Lockhart, Harry noticed in the lift itself, was not looking so good. His hair was an even more unnatural shade of glowing yellow than it had been in Harry's second year at Hogwarts, but his skin, smoothed though it was by doubtless-expensive cosmetics charms, was sagging and pouched at his jaw. His whole face looked somehow unfocused, as if it had been taken off overnight and put back on a little askew and without being properly ironed. And his eyes, Harry saw, were quite mad.

Still, Lockhart's grip on Harry's arm, as he tugged him out of the lift and into the Saviour's personal office, was firm enough. And his sister's gun was still jabbing into Harry's back.

 

As soon as the tall double doors closed behind them, Lockhart spun round and gave him a wide smile, glossy as a Sunday magazine. All around the walls, an array of posters and life-size golden statues, not to mention an oil painting in a fancy frame, turned as one and echoed the smile. It was rather as if the room had sprouted teeth.

"You thought you were so clever, didn't you, Potter," Lockhart said, patting Harry on the shoulder. "Just like Aladdin, the magic lamp falling into your worthless lap. And, well, I admit I was hoping to catch you in the act, so to speak. Enslaving your childhood enemy in a bid to recapture the glory of your infancy? Oh, tut tut tut, Potter! That would have made a lovely headline! But as it is you didn't do anything dramatic enough soon enough, and then this pesky wards situation got a bit out of hand. Diagon Alley, dear oh dear. Isn't it lucky the Muggles will have such a compelling media presence to latch onto once the wards finally fall? A real hero, for once! The Saviour of the whole wide world, not just the Wizarding one."

Behind Harry, Gwendolyn gasped. "What on earth are you talking about, Gilderoy?" she snapped. "Those ward things falling was never the plan! You've always said the Wizarding World wouldn't last five minutes against modern weaponry."

"Ah, Gwendolyn," said Lockhart, striding across the plush purple carpet to his desk. "Gwen, Gwen, Gwendolyn. Big sisters are ever so protective, aren't they, Harry," he said chummily. "But I suppose you wouldn't know."

“You’re nutters, Lockhart,” Ron called out. “You can’t just break the International Statute of Secrecy.”

Lockhart shrugged. “I’m sure I can make the relevant authorities overlook any irregularities while I’m getting myself established,” he said airily. “How much do you recall about your wartime adventures, Mr Weasley?”

Ron said nothing.

“I thought so!” said Lockhart. “I should really have made you another tea boy, since you’re hardly qualified to be an Auror as it is. But your hair clashes so dreadfully with everything, I’m afraid.”

“Hurry up, Gilderoy,” said Gwendolyn Lockhart tightly. “Bad enough that you insist on making a big public display of the Potter boy’s humiliation; we didn’t reckon on dealing with this ward business at the same time!”

"Ah, worry not, sister dear," said Lockhart affably. "Improvisation, that's the key to managing a modern media presence! Going with the flow!" He was scrabbling around in the piles of articles covering his desk, sending papers and shampoo samples flying. Finally he straightened up, holding a large and remarkably garish amethyst ring. “Here we go,” he said. “Right we are!”

 

Malfoy, Harry saw, was eyeing the ring with barely disguised horror. He tried to shoot him a reassuring look, but Malfoy seemed to be trying not to look at him.

“Now, young Malfoy,” said Lockhart. “We needed your agreement for the lamp, but I don’t think Potter here will be so obliging. He’s linked to you, though, isn’t he? Used a few wishes – he is only human.” He grinned sunnily up at Malfoy. “I command you to tie Potter and his wands to the ring as you are tied to the lamp,” he said. “Use all your juice if you need to; I won’t need you once I’ve got a Potter-shaped pipeline to the Elder Wand.”

Malfoy stared down at him, looking, for a second, completely furious.

"But don’t you worry, Potter," said Lockhart, "as the genie of the ring, you'll have a very much longer lifespan. Perhaps even centuries! I really have been refining my technique. And having actually wielded that useless stick of elder-wood might make a difference." He turned to his sister. "Shall we keep up with the Disney theme? I do like his present outfit, I have to say. That little cap just makes it!"

"Lockhart," said Harry quietly, "You really are absolutely nutters. And really very sloppy, as evil masterminds go."

“You bastard, Gilderoy,” yelled Gwendolyn, pushing out from behind Harry and Ron. “You said I could keep the Malfoy kid!”

“Now, Gwen,” said Lockhart absently. “Don’t fuss.” He stared up at Malfoy. “I gave you a command, little genie,” he said. “Isn’t that what your family’s good for? Following orders?”

 

“Actually,” said Malfoy thinly, “this time I’d rather not.”

Malfoy was looking drained and pale, more white than blue. And Harry could move freely again, he realised; Malfoy’s grip on him had failed. He was fading, in fact. Hardly more than a shadow in front Lockhart’s portraits, grinning and waving from the walls. His and Ron’s wands slipped from Malfoy's transparent grip and thumped to the floor beneath him.

“Stop it, you idiot,” Harry yelled. “Come on, Hermione!”

The office doors opened behind him. “Sorry, sorry!” called Hermione. “Stupefy!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Gwendolyn Lockhart keel over, her gun skidding away across the floor. Hermione, a little awkwardly, tossed him a familiar gnarled black wand.

Harry pointed the Elder Wand at Malfoy and spoke as firmly as he knew how. “I wish that you were free of the lamp and returned to your normal self,” he said. “Malfoy. Come on.”

“Oh, I don’t think –” said Lockhart, just as Ron scooped up his wand from the floor and hit him square in the chest with a stupefy. He crumpled forwards, smacking his face into the floor, and lay still.

“Well, that was easy,” said Ron, standing up and tossing Harry his wand. “Really easy.”

“You were right, Harry,” said Hermione. “It was in that stupid statue. He used the same spells as we used on Dumbledore’s tomb.”

 

But Harry was staring across the room at where Malfoy had been. There was nothing there but thin air.

“Oh, Harry,” said Hermione. “I think –”

Harry shook his head. “All the memory spells are still holding,” he said. “You’d know if they weren’t, right? He’s still here.” He bit his lip, thinking of Malfoy wrinkling his nose at kebabs; watching as rain fell right through his bright blue hands. Writing those pages of crazy notes in his messy little attic workshop. A partial connection with the Elder Wand, he thought. Leverage.

 

And he brought the Elder Wand down and snapped it across his knee.

 

Both he and Malfoy felt it a little, they would later decide. Something shifting inside their heads, like a key clicking in a lock. But at the time it was Ron and Hermione who doubled over, under the weight of five years' worth of memories.

 

And Malfoy crashed down onto the carpet, pointy and pale and entirely human, wand in one hand, holding his blue harem pants up with the other.

 

When Hermione struggled back to her feet, the first thing she did was throw her arms around Harry. "Oh, Harry," she said, "it must have been so awful for you! I'm so sorry!"

"Me too, mate," said Ron, clapping Harry on the back. "Well, I'm not sorry, exactly. Because I didn't do anything except get my memories stolen."

"Yes, yes, Weasley," said Malfoy, with his most unpleasant sneer. "We all know that being sorry is my job."

"Well, it is, actually, Malfoy," said Ron. “Nice to see you’re back to your old self again.”

Malfoy, incredibly, sniffed and nodded stiffly.

Ron blinked at him. “I remember everything and I still don’t get it,” he said plaintively to Hermione. “Maybe it’s the knickerbockers.”

“Oh, Ron,” said Hermione. “Do be quiet.” And she flung herself at him at and buried her face in his shoulder.

 

Harry turned tactfully away. “You’re not dead, Malfoy,” he said.

Malfoy stared at Harry. He looked very pink for someone so pale, Harry thought, especially when you were used to him being blue. “Your powers of observation astound me, Potter,” he said, giving a brief kick to Lockhart’s prone form as he went by. Then he stopped dead, and a beatific smile spread over his face. "Potter," he said dreamily. "I never imagined how glad I'd be to say the word."

“You said it in the atrium,” said Harry.

“That didn’t count.”

"That's adorable, Malfoy," said Ron, lifting his face from Hermione’s hair. "Almost as adorable as your knickerbockers."

"They're harem pants," said Harry absently.

Ron boggled at him, speechless.

Harry shrugged. “Did the journalists really buy that the wards on Diagon Alley had come down?" he asked Hermione.

Hermione wiped her eyes hastily. "They certainly seemed to," she said. "It served its purpose, anyway." She stepped away from Ron and flicked her wand at two of Lockhart’s hideous statues. “Mobilifigura,” she said, motioning two of the statues forwards until both Gwendolyn and her brother were being held under their armpits, dangling from the statues' inflexible golden grip. “Not very ergonomic,” she said, looking at the sagging bodies. “Oh well.”

 

"And on that heart-warming note," said Malfoy from behind them, "I had better go and extract my parents from Minister Shacklebolt's office before he comes back and finds them in residence. Please feel free to give me some warning before you have me arrested. I assure you, I probably won't run."

And he made for the office doors, head down.

"Um," said Hermione. "Malfoy. Would you like to borrow a cloak or something?"

Malfoy stopped, looked down at himself, and blanched visibly. With a flurry of spells, his flimsy outfit was replaced by something suitably Malfoy-ish, with a lot of buttons. Harry half-wondered if it was an illusion. If it was, it was an indubitably decent one, in all senses.

The blue harem pants fluttered sadly to the floor.

And Malfoy, ignoring Harry completely, nodded his head jerkily to Hermione and Ron - "Granger. Weasley." -and made once more for the exit.

"We're not going to have you arrested!" said Harry, hotly.

But Malfoy was already closing the door behind him.

"You know, mate," said Ron, "we really absolutely should."

 

\--

 

Draco Malfoy was not arrested. In fact, thanks to some fairly creative testimony from Harry Potter, Saviour of the Wizarding World, he wasn't even charged.

"It's hard to prosecute someone for being forced into magical servitude," explained Harry Potter himself, leaning on the counter of an evil-smelling potions shop in Knockturn Alley and peering through a fringe of hanging bat's feet at the white-haired figure sweeping the floor. "How is your, er, father?"

"Much improved, thank you for asking," said Draco Malfoy stiffly. "He doesn't even remember. The Ministry, that is."

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "It's only us two and Ron and Hermione who do. And the Lockharts, I suppose, for all the good it'll do them."

"How very nice for us," said Malfoy, sweeping a mess of spilt eyeballs and woundwort viciously into a corner. "So things are back as they should be."

"And how's your mum?" Harry ploughed on.

Malfoy stopped sweeping. "Oh, as it happens, she remembers as well," he said bitterly. "She says she knew something was missing at the Ministry. Did the same spell as Granger on her wand, actually. Remembered enough that the reversal didn't really take on her. At the moment, we aren't really on speaking terms." He gave a little barking laugh. "I'd like to think I would have told her in any case, but I think we both know that's not true, is it, Potter? Or should that be 'Master'?"

"Don't call me that!" Harry stepped forwards and reached towards Malfoy's arm.

Malfoy flinched away. "Why? At the present moment, it really isn't so far from the truth. You know I don't even get paid for working here? I just get bed and board, and that means mostly sleeping up in the attic and eating porridge."

"About that," said Harry. "Hermione got you a job."

Malfoy grinned nastily at him. "What, Granger? Pull the other one, Potter. If this isn't some sick joke, it's you trying to conceal your nauseating philanthropy."

"Actually," said Harry, "you total prat, it's Hermione trying to figure out some way you can repay the Wizarding World for what you did. Or nearly did. You're not going to do that by sweeping giblets off a shop floor. It's nothing to do with me - I don't have the slightest bit of pull with the Potions people. They think Aurors are all brainless dolts, even famous ones. It won't be paid either, to start with, of course. And Hermione tells me that Experimental Potions is a risky place to work. If you can't handle it, that is. The last apprentice came out with her arm seared right off."

Under the dangling shocks of bat feet and raven's wings, Malfoy's pinched face was white with anger. He almost seemed to be glowing, Harry thought.

And his voice was very clipped and precise indeed when he said, rather loudly, "get out, Potter. Get out!"

 

\--

 

Draco Malfoy took the apprenticeship in Experimental Potions.

Harry Potter waited for him every Friday evening, in the odd smelling passageway between Extremely Experimental Potions and Theoretical Nostrums (for several unremembered years under the rule of Gilderoy Lockhart known as the Department of Shampoo Development), and invited him out to the pub.

It was three months before he said yes.

"So you really live in that dump?" Malfoy asked, long white fingers wrapped around a pint he'd insisted on paying for himself.

"Tell me about it," said Hermione, leaning back in her chair. "That place is a health-hazard. Do you know the gargoyles regurgitate bits of chewed-up pigeon onto the pavement?"

"Onto the Muggles, too, sometimes," said Malfoy. "I stayed there for over a week, remember." His face over his pint grew pink and pleased for a moment. "And being immaterial, believe you me, I could see everything. You would not believe the state of Potter's - "

"Merlin's underpants," groaned Harry.

"Well, I was going to say kitchen drawers," said Malfoy smugly. "But whatever you say, Potter." He leaned back in his chair and sipped at his pint.

Ron, sitting across from Harry, sighed theatrically.

 

\--

 

Six months later, Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter were sitting together at a pub, all on their own. It was, Harry acknowledged to himself, really very gay indeed. Malfoy's white hands - blotched a little with red from a recent potions mishap, true - were clasped around his pint glass. At the bar, an especially ancient witch was defiantly smoking a foot-long clay pipe, in bold contravention of the latest attempt to extend Muggle anti-smoking laws to Wizarding establishments. Every so often, her pipe belched out a bright blue canary. Under the table, Harry's and Malfoy's thighs were touching.

Harry thought about telling Malfoy how very gay they were being. But Malfoy, who was gay with very little effort and in fact nearly all the time except in front of his father, was unlikely to receive the news with due solemnity.

Instead Harry took a fortifying gulp of his pint and invited Malfoy back to his place. "I mean, you've seen it before," he said. "But I've tidied!"

"Why, Potter," said Malfoy lazily. "Are you asking me up to see your drawers?"

"Actually," said Harry, lowering his voice, "some of those drawers still have those harem pants in them."

Malfoy's pale eyebrows rose very high indeed.

"And, well," said Harry. "I know that they're still a sign of your bondage - I mean of your servitude or whatever. And it's fine if you never want to see them again! But, well, I did hang onto them, as it happens. And if you ever did feel like putting them on again ... well. I thought they were hot as fuck."

"Oh, Harry," said Malfoy softly. "What a fortunate thing for me it is that you have truly terrible taste." And he knocked back the last of his pint with a decisive swallow. "Well?" he said. "Harry? What are we waiting for?"

 

 

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